Aakash Goel's Volunteer Story

Aakash Goel was a master's student at the Georgia Institute of Technology when he attended C++Now 2013 as a volunteer.

Having followed BoostCon for a few years, it was a totally amazing opportunity to be selected for the C++Now volunteer program. I learned a lot about C++ that I thought I already knew, met a lot of cool and knowledgeable people, and more than anything, returned with a new confidence and appreciation for the language.

A lot of sessions were organized in the tutorial format, which is where I learned the most. All the presenters were enthusiastic about answering newbie questions. The discussions with the attendees about their experiences with the language and software development in general were particularly insightful, and something I did not know I was missing till I was there.

Boris Schäling: Containers in Boost: Boris talked about the various containers available in Boost, which extend the available options when combined with the containers in the standard library. Although Boost and standard library containers are not known to go along very well together, this talk was a very good top view of what is available.

Marshall Clow: Fun with Tuples: This was one of the most fun talks in the conference. Marshall talked about std::tuple and std::tie, which are not difficult to understand in themselves, but very good for some experimentation in an attempt to learn more about the nuances of the language.

I very much hope to be able to attend, contribute to, and learn from this wonderful gathering of C++ enthusiasts in its future iterations.